“There is now every evidence of a strong and admirably organized cabal,” he added.  “And to pull us down they will not stop at abuse of even you, if failure haunts them.  I shall get the most of it, perhaps all.  I hope so, for I am used to it.”

He laughed, and quite as light-heartedly as ever; but Washington looked at him with uneasiness.

“You are a terrible fighter, Hamilton,” he said.  “I have never seen or dreamed of your equal.  Why not merely oppose to them a massive resistance?  Why be continually on the warpath?  They give you a tentative scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever.  When you are alone with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of a thousand years in your brain, and I doubt if at such times you remember your name; you are one of the greatest, wisest, coolest statesmen of any age; but the moment you come forth to the open, you are not so much a political leader as a warlike Scot at the head of his clan, and readier by far to make a dash into the neighbouring fastness than to wait for an attack.  Are you and Jefferson going to fight straight through this session?—­for if you are, I shall no longer yearn so much for the repose of Mount Vernon as for the silences of the tomb.”

Washington spoke lightly, as he often did when they were alone, and he had returned from Virginia refreshed; but Hamilton answered contritely:—­

“We both behaved abominably last year, and it was shocking that you should bear the brunt of it.  I’ll do my best to control myself in the Cabinet—­although that man rouses all the devil in me; but not to fight at the head of my party.  Oh!  Can the leopard change his spots?  I fear I shall die with my back against the wall, sir, and my boots on.”  “I haven’t the slightest doubt of it.  But be careful of giving too free and constant a play to your passions and your capacity for rancour, or your character will deteriorate.  Tell me,” he added abruptly, narrowing his eyes and fixing Hamilton with a prolonged scrutiny, “do you not feel its effects already?”

By this time the early, half-unwilling, half-magnetized affection which the boy in Hamilton had yielded to his Chief had given place to a consistent admiration for the exalted character, the wisdom, justice, and self-control of the President of the United States, and to a devoted attachment.  The bond between the two men grew closer every day, and only the end of all things severed it.  Hamilton, therefore, replied as frankly as if Washington had asked his opinion on the temper of the country, instead of probing the sacred recesses of his spirit:—­